Toolroom Records #RESET with a New Approach to House Music

Sometimes you just need to step back, reassess, regroup, and relaunch. Major brands do it all the time. Entire professional sports teams, even. But today, we're talking about music. At a time when so many artists and labels are aiming for the mainstream, Toolroom Records is scaling things back.

After ten years of leading the industry, the team at Toolroom are going back to their roots. Their newfangled #RESET campaign is about moving forward, with the utmost respect being paid to their origins. Toolroom is slimming their artist roster, putting together a new album series, and have compiled new concepts for live events. They're "shouting from the rooftops" with their refocused, strong musical vision for the world to see.

We talked to the label boss and house music legend Mark Knight, as well as the first two artists who are officially a part of the #RESET campaign—Weiss and Adrian Hour.

To understand how far they've come, we need to go back to where it all started: "Toolroom Records was born as an output for my own music. The fact that this was successful attracted other artists, as we ran it like a business," explained Mark. "Through sheer success, we stretched our musical parameters to something we weren't totally comfortable with."

The music Toolroom was releasing wasn't bad by any means, if that's what you think. It was actually quite good. Mark Knight is Beatport's #2 all-time seller, behind Deadmau5. Instead, Mark explains, it had to do with the vision. "I think we maybe followed the market down a road that wasn't completely compatible with our own vision for the music," he admitted.

It's clear that this was the right time to act. House music right now is "divided up into too many sub-genres," says Mark. "There's too much emphasis on the whole commercial versus underground." Weiss was on the same page. "Over the last four years, the dance music industry has been dominated by this progressive/EDM sound and now the public is after something fresh and new," the Brit commented.

Toolroom is providing exactly that—an approach that fans of all forms of dance music can relate too, regardless of genre preference. As a leader in the industry, Toolroom has a large fan base and a significant amount of influence. The hope is that even those still enraptured by more EDM-styled sounds will at least learn a lesson as to where their favourite style of music originated. "For the new generation of dance music fans, [true] house music is something fresh and new for them to discover," said Weiss. "And for the older generation, this is a genre of music to reconnect to."

While speaking with Mark, it became clear Toolroom realized something that I think is fundamentally overlooked at times. Labels are conduits for discovery in the music space. They need to push commendable music that is true to their nature in order to retain Toolroom's new favourite word—credibility—amongst their fans. We've seen what happens when certain labels begin to saturate themselves and start to pump out low-quality, cop-out releases for the painstakingly obvious sake of money.

"Let's worry about what is credible and refocus energy on music with longevity and credibility," said Mark. Again, we return to the credibility factor. Toolroom is focused on credible house music and credible artists. They want to be a reliable source of house music for years to come. If we're to judge them based on their past, they are poised to do exactly that.

"The only way you can judge credibility is 'will you play this in five years' time,'" Mark stated. "If you can't go back and play the record later down the line then, I don't think it's there for the right reason." Weiss echoed the same thoughts as his label boss. "The music has to stand out and be different from what everyone else is making. It's all very well making music copying your idols, but that wont make you credible as a producer."

The positivity and optimism amongst the bunch was refreshing. Mark says the focus is "on new music from amazing talents."

"Toolroom Live 01 is the first big embodiment of that, but there will be a huge string of singles from the label that really define what #RESET means," Mark commented. "We will also be announcing the first Toolroom Live events, which will bring this refocused musical approach to club floors and festival stages across the globe."

Adrian Hour and Weiss mirrored Mark's positivity. "These are really exciting times at Toolroom" said Weiss. Adrian added, "We are preparing new bomb releases, new artists, new shows, complex mix set ups, but most of all…good and real music!"

Mr. Knight made arguably the soundest comment of the interview. "It's all house music at the end of the day." And he's right. It is. It's how you handle it and how you package it that defines the integrity of your brand.

Hats off to Toolroom for all the hard work they've put into this campaign and the great results so far. We're excited to see where it leads.

You can follow Zack on Twitter: @zackrota